<p>Just wondering if anyone attended and if you can give us an update on how things went.</p>
<p>i attended two classes - analysis of 20th century music and french - langugage, culture, history.
the music class had 3rd year students in it and i was confused as heck wat was going on. but it seemed really interesting and i met a student there who went to my high school and she recognized me which was really cool. she showed me around the music practice rooms.
french class was conversational and it was stuff that i did last year during french 4 and i could understand the basic gist of things. i really liked that class and wish my french 5 can be more like it.
the professors seemed good humored and lively. classes were small. about 8 ppl. </p>
<p>oh and THERE WERE HOT GUYS THERE TOO. ok i admit i only saw like 3. and they WERENT prospies(although my friend claims that if the guy is hot, then he must be a prospie. but there were like 5 hot prospie guys). and there were some pretty girls there too. so its not totally devoid of good looking people. YAY.</p>
<p>the food was great at all 3 dining halls, but then again i am the least pickiest eater ever and i'll eat anything lol. but i hav to admit, bartlett (max p's dining hall) had the best food. it's ranked #2 in the nation (#1 is cornell). pierce/bj's dining halls were buffet style. bartlett was a la carte. </p>
<p>the library was amazing. it was ENORMOUS and i bet there's everything you can ever need in there. it was friday afternoon when i went in and i saw ppl sleeping there lol. i hav to admit the bookstacks are a bit creepy (a room with just books on shelves after shelves after shelves.) there's a desk there and my friend siad if you study there and died, it'd be like 2 weeks before anyone found your body. but it's too creepy i wouldnt wanna study all alone in there! </p>
<p>i went on a campus tour and a dorm tour of pierce and max p. pierce's rooms ARE TINYYY (but if ur a single i guess it could be ok). i dont really mind tiny rooms but these rooms were really small. but the community feeling is really tight knit, which i hear, and i like that aspect of it. but it 's on the very edge of campus and seemed kinda dark and ... gloomy. but htats just my opinion. it's convenient to hav a dining hall and snack bar right inside the building (but that means easier to get the freshman 15!)
max p i liked. i liked the wacky bright colors on the inside AND outside. i thoguht it was very bright loking and i changed max p to my first choice and pierce to my 2nd for housing.</p>
<p>i stayed overnite in shoreland. it looks very rundown but i hear they're renovating it 2008 but the rooms ARE huge. my room was atriple with kitchen dining hall and a living room space. my floor seemed very community-tight and everyone seemed friendly with each other and doors were open and ppl would come over. the ppl there were overall very nice. but so did most of the ppl i met on campus. </p>
<p>i also visited broadview where my friend lives and i went inside his dorm. it was asingle and it wasn't a huge room but not really that small either. hm not much else i can say about broadview. </p>
<p>overall i reallly enjoyed my overnite bc of the friends i already knew there (yay for meeting online friends in person!) and with my friend who was a current student. he just showed me around campus and we just talked and it was awesome. </p>
<p>the campus is really beautiful. i relaly like the gothic architecture. reminds me of castles! there are cars driving through the streets and u hav to cross a few streets but i dont mind doing that. (but i still think stanford has the most beautiful campus!)</p>
<p>i hav to admit i was kind of bored during dinner cuz the actual students there were just talking and it was just me and another prospie just... sitting there. i was bored out of my mind and it was awkward to just butt in on convos. i kind of felt like a freshman in high school amongst many upperclassmen/seniors. but then some students there seemed nice to prospies. </p>
<p>there were some parties on campus (but i was off campus in shoreland so i didnt really experience any parites) so there IS a social life there. i heard some instances of drinking and such but drinking is probably everywhere. and there was a rap battle in shoreland which i missed cuz i was in broadview with my friend.
i had a good feel about the school and could imagine myself as a student there.</p>
<p>hm thats all i can think of for now. if u hav specific questions let me know !</p>
<p>it was ****ing great.
i stayed in broadview and it was pretty nice.
food was interesting, but edible.
i sat in on a class called "get thee to a nunnery." it was about medieval literature... i took notes and it was a very small class. i can't describe everything about the class because it was just.. amazing. probably a 2nd year or 3rd year class. i knew what the professor was talking about most of the time, too.
the campus is beautiful.
ted o'neill is my hero.</p>
<p>Heres my lengthy impression for what its worth. They would probably be better if my flight hadnt been delayed until 2 AM and I didnt consequently fall asleep during everything. </p>
<p>[ul]
[li]Campus:[/li] Its much more beautiful in the spring than in the summer, when I last visited. The sunlight filtering through the blossoms and leaves of young and ancient trees, hitting the Gothic architecture is amazing. The ivy wasnt blooming yet, but there were cheery yellow tulips and daffodils everywhere (according to my host, campus was five times uglier before the flowers were conveniently planted two days before we arrived). The main quad and the area around the botany pond were absolutely stunning. The rest of the campus looked like a typical college and was nice too. Nothing is very new or shiny, but thats to be expected. Hyde Park is not the least bit terrifying. Even the ghetto neighborhoods to the south that we rode through from Midway airport werent bad. The campus is pretty big so a bike could be convenient. Theres scaffolding and construction equipment around random buildings as something is apparently always being built or fixed. Bathrooms are decent. Libraries and Reynolds are nice. Streets and buildings are reasonably easy to navigate. Sidewalk blocks were of uneven height so I kept tripping over them, but thats just me. The Oriental Institute is pretty amazing. I was extremely disappointed because I didnt get a chance to visit the maze-like bookstore and didnt find anyone selling U of C, where the only thing that will go down on you is your GPA shirts.</p>
<p>[li]People: [/li]I thought the people were very friendly and helpful and shockingly normal. No socially inept people lurking in the corners, no major displays of geekery aside from some references to ancient Greek playwrights and a tutorial about how to correctly and mathematically guess the number of M & Ms in a oddly shaped container. I was actually pretty disappointed by the lack of casual conversation about the physics of a candlestick, the distribution of the frequency of burps after ingesting soda, dead languages, etc. Maybe it was just the students I ended up talking to? Fun was very much alive and kicking. People greeted each other a lot on the streets and the hallways and stopped for chitchat so the overall atmosphere was pretty laid back and warm. The student panel was funny and great. There seemed to be many more attractive females than males, but neither was as rare as people sometimes fear. Everyone seemed happy about attending and assured me that if I did meet any outwardly miserable people (which I didnt) that even they secretly enjoyed it and wouldn't go anywhere else either.</p>
<p>[li]Dorms: [/li]I ended up staying at the Shoreland, which was my top choice. People there seemed as social as reputed and were excited at the presence of prospies. The dorm seems to have a lot of pride in itself and its individual floors. Everyone knows each other and the lounge is always full of people to hang out with. There seemed to be a lot of dorm activities (I think they were going boating next weekend), competitions, and games. Snowflakes on the ceiling and a painted fireplace on the wall were left over from the Christmas decoration competition, people being persuaded to run a10K marathon with the RA that weekend, a group of people were inviting people to barbecue at the Point, LOST marathons, signs from the Odds vs Evens room number war were plastered on the walls, there were games of assassin where you get killed by being shot with a water gun/hit with a bucket full of water/thrown into the lake (but being killed in front of a prospie doesnt count), and there seemed to be little opportunity to study. There was a discussion on when it is normal to buy pairs of socks individually rather than in bulk and how glorious it is to have two labs a week. There was also a plot to pool together money and get all the prospies drunk and have them participate/humiliate themselves in the rap battle at 10:30, but I was so exhausted I went to bed at 10 and have no idea what happened. The actual quality of the dorm was very unimpressive. The furniture is pretty beaten up, the carpets in the rooms and tiles in the bathrooms are worn, and the whole dorm is more than a little shabby and does not look like a luxury hotel in any way, but people dont seem to mind much. The lakefront view is pretty nice, but taking the bus to go eat or go to the library or go to class seems kind of annoying. Theres a bus schedule posted in the front, but going back to Shoreland, you never know when the bus comes. Youre supposed to get used to it pretty quickly though. Overall, Shoreland (which has ridiculously large living space) and Pierce (which is so incredibly cramped that in doubles theres approximately two feet of space in between the beds) have the most normal and social people, BJ to a lesser extent because of the singles, Max is fun but full of first years that are still stuck in a cliquish high school mentality, and Broadview/Snell Hitchcock have the reclusive and eccentric types.</p>
<p>[li]Food: [/li]I ate at Burton Judson and thought the Harry Potter architecture and the sitting-by-house (that is by no means enforced) was kind of cute. The pizza is a bit hard to saw through, the quiches are good, the salad bar and pasta is decent, and theres an unlimited supply of ice cream. The food was okay, but I can see how itd get tiresome. </p>
<p>[li]Classes:[/li]I sat in on an Econ and European Civ class. The Econ class I suspect wasnt for Econ majors, and made sense until the professor began covering the board with equations. The class of about 20 was very unresponsive except for one girl, who would sometimes save the professor when hed ask a question and people would just stare at him or at their notes. I fell asleep in the middle. Again, I dont think that was a class for people actually interested in Econ. The Civ class was more comprehensible, but I still drifted off because of sleep deprivation. They were discussing Tocquevilles view of the French Revolution and the importance of secondary sources. Some of the questions the professor brought up were related to the reading, others were out of nowhere. She seemed to know who liked to talk, and who preferred to listen and asked the people who were eager to participate by name to express their opinions. You had to think pretty quickly and the professor didnt allow people wander off topic or jump to a conclusion or not have evidence to back up what they were saying. The ones I attended were just alright, nothing awe-inspiring. I heard other classes like Get Thee to a Nunnery had as little as five people and that in some Political Science classes everyone was scrambling for a chance to talk.
[/ul]</p>
<p>Im not overwhelmed by love or hatred after my trip. The whole thing felt strangely unstructured, but thats probably because I skipped most of the talks. I do feel weirdly homesick for Chicago.</p>
<p>cookiemonkey1004-</p>
<p>Were you at Shoreland on Friday? The swing dancing ("Java Jive") was on the second floor in the ballroom that night from 8 pm until midnight or so (it moves around between Ida and Shoreland this quarter). I was there, and it was loads of fun.</p>
<p>deus.ex.machina-</p>
<p>Are you male? Because, as a female who lives on the U. of C. campus, I find that there are many more good-looking guys than girls. Maybe it is how our brains are wired. :)</p>
<p>katharos i was at shoreland friday morning and was on campus from 9 AM on. WOW there was swing dancing? poops i missed it!</p>
<p>Haha, my hosts took me to a frat party with other prospies in our house. (I stayed in Max P so the frat were across the street). It was pretty mild, and I didn't drink. There were TONS of prospies there. I love Max P! The people there are really cool and I like the rooms a lot. The dining hall food wasn't bad. Hmm, I thought the classes I sat in on were interesting. </p>
<p>And I met some aweeeeesome people. Heh.</p>
<p>and i met twilight4 in person.</p>
<p>Haha, yeah, that was pretty random and fun.</p>
<p>most def. i saw you and you were like "hey i know you" and then i realized it was you! :)</p>
<p>Anybody awake in the shoreland at 4AM happen to be looking out the window and see my friends and I with 7 prospies waiting for the ****ing drunk van to come pick us up and take us back to max? (I told them we should have walked...)</p>
<p>omg no!!! :( i was at shoreland. but i slept at 2AM !</p>
<p>I was in breckinridge. They were pretty- almost tooooo laid back- odd..maybe.</p>
<p>But they seemed to enjoy their awkwardness, so I enjoyed it as well. </p>
<p>The campus was stunning.</p>
<p>I loved every second of my trip.</p>